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Alaska Polar Bear Numbers Declining

"Polar bear populations in and around Alaska are declining due to continued melting of sea ice and Russian poaching, according to reports released Thursday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Fewer polar bears have survived in the southern Beaufort Sea, which extends from northern Alaska to parts of Canada, and in the Chukchi and Bering Seas between northwestern Alaska and Russia."  [Reuters]

Urban Farming, a Bit Closer to the Sun

"City dwellers have long cultivated pots of tomatoes on top of their buildings. But farming in the sky is a fairly recent development in the green roof movement, in which owners have been encouraged to replace blacktop with plants, often just carpets of succulents, to cut down on storm runoff, insulate buildings and moderate urban heat." [New York Times]

CO2 Levels Highest in Two Million Years

"To determine just how high temperatures may climb and how climate patterns may shift, researchers may need to pinpoint, for comparison, a time in our planet's past when a similar carbon dioxide jump happened...A new study says atmospheric carbon dioxide levels haven't been this high in more than two million years."  [National Geographic]

Borneo Project Aims To Yield Lessons On Saving Forests

"Within a vast deforested area on Borneo island, Australia and Indonesia hope to turn an ecological disaster into a global lesson on how to help local communities save tropical forests and fight climate change.  Borneo, like the Amazon, is at the center of efforts to fight deforestation that is a major contributor to global warming and many governments are trying to build on a U.N.-backed scheme that aims to reward developing nations for preserving their forests." [Reuters]

New York Sign Counts Global Greenhouse Gases

"Deutsche Bank lit a seven-storey-high sign in the middle of Manhattan on Thursday that counts the total amount of greenhouse gases trapped in the Earth's atmosphere...The bank said it was the world's first sign to show real-time measurement of the gases blamed for global warming and hoped it would spark more public debate on how to reduce emissions." [Reuters]